Yoon Soyeon
The Dreaming Days of Splendor, 2022
Oil on canvas
130.3 x 130.3 cm
Unique work
Certificate of authenticity included
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About the work
- Materials
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 130.3 x 130.3 cm
- Frame
- Frame not included
- Signature
- No signature
- Certificate Of Authenticity
- Certificate included
There came a time when the artist found herself doing nothing but looking at the sky. Without purpose or intention, her gaze lingered upward - until she began to notice. The clouds were always shifting. The light was subtly changing. In the distance, the shapes of mountains and fields began to emerge. From this quiet observation, something stirred - a forgotten rhythm, a soft return to feeling. And with it, the impulse to paint. The Dreaming Days of Splendor is born from this restoration of perception. The paper airplanes and boats that drift through the canvas are not whimsical distractions, but intimate vessels—temporary shelters for memory, hope, and the need to rest. Ordinary objects like cardboard boxes and paper bags, recurring motifs in Yoon Soyeon’s work, are transformed into private spaces where the invisible can dwell. Into these containers, the artist tucks fragments of sky, the breath of a forest, or the hush of wind. The Korean expression “화양연화 (hwa-yang-yeon-hwa)” refers to the most beautiful and fleeting time of one’s life - a time often recognized only once it has passed. Yoon does not seek to recreate that time directly, but rather to dream of it, to gently hold it within a new space. Her paintings do not capture nostalgia in its full intensity; instead, they allow its traces to move quietly, with warmth, across the surface of everyday life. Oil, her chosen medium, suits this tempo of thought. It dries slowly, asking for patience, allowing feelings to layer and shift with time. The textures and nuances of her canvas - subtle brushstrokes, softened colors, the intimate weight of accumulated layers - cannot be fully seen in a photograph. They must be felt in person, where the painting reveals its depth not all at once, but gradually, like memory resurfacing. As she painted, the artist found herself returning to a question: “Why do I paint?” It is not a rhetorical question, nor a crisis, but a beginning - a quiet confrontation with the self. Though she has painted for many years, Yoon sees this moment as a threshold, a turning point from craft to deeper introspection. Painting becomes not a pursuit of clarity, but a way of staying close to what cannot be resolved. This work was created in a time of emotional unrest, in a world that feels increasingly uncertain. And yet, through the act of painting, the artist reaches for something hopeful. The Dreaming Days of Splendor is not a declaration of escape, but a gentle insistence that beauty and tenderness are still possible - and worth seeking. This painting is a message, sent slowly and sincerely: That even amid noise and doubt, we are allowed to dream. And if the viewer, even for a moment, smiles quietly before it - then the painting has done what it came to do.
About the artist
Yoon Soyeon’s paintings draw our attention to what we so often overlook: the quiet companions of daily life - delivery boxes, paper shopping bags, hand-folded paper planes. These modest objects, familiar to the point of invisibility, become transformed in her hands into something tender and strangely expansive. Her work does not seek drama or spectacle. Instead, it offers a delicate choreography of space and emotion - composed, restrained, but emotionally resonant. The spaces she constructs on canvas are not fixed interiors or defined exteriors. Rather, they are elastic rooms of feeling: containers of memory, stillness, and private reverie. A paper box in her work may be a room, a window, or a sea; it may hold the weight of routine or the lift of a fleeting dream. Using oil paint - a medium that rewards patience - Yoon builds her images slowly, allowing thought and feeling to collect between layers. Her preference for this slow-drying medium mirrors the pace of her inner rhythm. Painting becomes a space not of performance but of listening; not of resolution but of ongoing attention. There is an understated symbolism at play. The recurring presence of boxes and bags - fragile, temporary, and portable - becomes a metaphor for emotional containment and spatial possibility. They are at once grounded and nomadic, soft structures through which the artist navigates both the self and the outside world. Central to Yoon’s artistic philosophy is a quiet inquiry, often unspoken but persistent: Am I content? Am I still in love with this work? How long can I go on painting? These questions are not declarations of doubt but rituals of reflection - moments of pause that have accompanied her for more than two decades as a working artist. Her recent projects show an expanding horizon. The introduction of nature—sky, forest, sea - and elements like paper boats and airplanes suggest a desire not to escape, but to breathe. Her world remains rooted in the everyday, but her gaze reaches outward, gently. The box is still here, but now it contains wind. For Yoon, painting is not a means of escape from anxiety - it is a way of holding it, tending to it, allowing it to soften over time. Her work does not shout, but it stays. And in that staying, there is warmth, generosity, and a quiet resilience. If, in front of one of her paintings, a viewer finds themself smiling - softly, for no reason at all - then perhaps the painting has already done its work.